Today CCleaner updated and did his thing..
In the previous version I had excluded my downloadfolder from cleaning.
But apperently some dipsh#t developer decided not to keep the preferences of users in the update.. Normaly you can rely that your settings are respected whilst updating a program.
But this progra decided to put everything on “delete” without asking or prompting..
So.. no warning.. and whilst the settings where NOT TO DLETETE THE DONWLOAD FOLDER…. Ccleaner deleted it.
Good job… Not.
After Ccleaner did his thing in the new version, all my files in my downloadfolder where deleted!!
Everything was in there, from my electronics schemes, government stuff and my sons old musucicalls, about 10+ years of history, all gone in an instant because SOME dev didn’t decide to import the old preferences file from the old version.
So thanks…..
Deleting all my stuff without warning, prompt or whatever signal!
Legaly I won’t have anything to stand on because I started the program myself.
But I will never ever use a program of Piriform again!
Those incompetent developers have destroyed 10+ years of history.
So thanks again and I hope this f#ckup will cost you many customers.
Hi @KWu,
The Windows Downloads folder is cleaned during a Health Check but is not selected by default in a Custom Clean. We were unable to reproduce the issue you described.
Could you confirm whether this occurred while using Health Check or Custom Clean?
You mentioned that your setting was configured not to delete the Downloads folder, yet the folder was cleaned. Are you using the default Windows Downloads location?
Hi Laurence,
Thanks for your reply.
I used the previous version of Ccleaner and there I configured the downloadlacation not to be cleaned.
When opening Ccleaner it updated to the newest version and started working.
Because “Health Check” is the first option, I guess that Ccleaner performed that.
After finishing, my complete downloadfolder was empty! About 10 years of downloads gone (unfortunatly my windows downloadfolder wasn’t included in my backup to my NAS).
And yes, I use the default downloadfolder for Windows (C://users/****/Downloads)
After the disaster happened, I looked further in the settings of the new version of Ccleaner and in “settings” I could find a tab called “Chrome” for settings. There the box at “clean downloads” was checked (activated)..
Verry strange because in the previous version I had disabled the cleaning of the downloadfolder.
Unfortunatly the damage has been done.
I tryd many recover programs (also Recuva), but the deleted files can not be restored. The schematics and drawings for my hobby I can probably find on the internet again (with some effort), the downloaded files of for example the musical of my son, pictures from wetransfer, etc. are gone forever….
Lesson learned is that the downloadfolder is now included in my backup..
Permanent damage is the loss of my files.
To be fair here, Downloads is regarded by Windows itself as a temporary folder.
It’s meant as somewhere that all downloads go so they are easy to find after downloading - and then if you want to keep them you move them elsewhere.
You shouldn’t really be storing ‘important’ files in Downloads long term.
That said the developers of CCleaner v6 knew better than to have it set to be cleaned as default.
(It was for a very short time the default in Health Check in CCleaner v6 too, but was soon switched off following complaints such as your own).
It seems the developers of CCleaner7 either didn’t know about that; or thought that they knew best.
(It’s just one of a number of things in CCleaner7 where previously hard won user experience has simply been ignored).